biosynth8

It doesn't. It has less of an open world than Dark Souls. There are classic levels, they are rather long and you can return to them, but they are seperate levels with no connection between them. Apart from that, it's an interesting game with a fresh setting. It's competently made, the graphics are good. But... it's not really good. Thin story, kind of bland in general. They tried to make the settings rather realistic, which means you are mainly walking through similar streets most of the time. This isn't helped by the fact that many assets for buildings are re-used several times in each levels. I got lost all the time. It's also suprisingly easy. You get a freeze gun early on and it works on almost every boss. You also have a wide variety of weapons to make the game more difficult for you - or only use the chain weapons, that keep you out of reach of many enemies.

It's not an old school fps. It's more akin to shooters of the late 2010s - dashing, no quick saving, special abilities. I didn't like it.

The first one is better, especially atmosphere-wise.

Not bad, but in the end it's just another retro shooter.

I might play this for the architecture alone. Maybe on discount.

I like what they are going for, but it looks rather monotonous. Poolcore is a varied aesthetic.

I've added this to my whislist, too. It's not a procedually generated world, so I'm kind of excited to play it - as soon as there's a discount.

I think it's trying too hard to be weird. It's kind of a bland aimless weirdness.

I kind of expected more from it. It's cute, funny and the gameplay is absolutely fine ... but I just thought there would be more about the Cylinder than just a glorified system for enclosing levels.

This feels very oldschool. It reminded me a bit of Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare (2001). The biggest problem is that it's kind of boring. As Arseniy mentioned, the writing is weak and the gameplay isn't anything special either. I'd rather play Alone in the Dark.Other Media

I had no trouble finding a cheap copy after reading this thread. Getting it to run took only a bit of effort. It's really a decent game.

I wouldn't really call it obscure, but it's hard to get nowadays. I played it some time after it came out, I think I rented a copy from our local library back then. I might also still have a disc around but, I don't think I want to go through all that work to get it running again. I remember kind of liking it for the atmosphere, but I disliked the gameplay. I can absolutely understand that it's a game you can easily get obsessed with. It's from that short era where graphics in 3D games were decent and used creativly. Most of the time you only get one of the two.

From what I can gather now, the game is too simplistic for it's own good. It wants to be a survival and crafting game with those meditation mechanics slapped on top, but nothing is really deep. Your mental bar is just another status you have to keep topping up by looking for the right resources (domes) and waiting for a while. I'm most disappointed by the survival mechanics. While there are different kinds of afflictions, like pathogenes and poison, they don't make a different. Any kind of affliction basicly means you die within a day if you don't find a way to treat it. Nothing goes away by itself, so your health bar in this situation is only a timer. Your character also stays fit as a fiddle until the very last moment. You can also only get one condition at a time, so have fun dancing on snakes when you drank bad water. This wouldn't be so bad if survival games of this kind weren't a dime a dozend nowadays. Many have done similar mechanics and most have done it better. Well, I'm only some hours in, so I'll post again when I've finished it.

I'm sure it's fun with friends, but playing it alone just gets boring and repetetive.

This game just keeps going on and on. It's the proof that a game can be too well balanced - it keeps the same difficulty up for hours and hours without any challanges.